Sowing and Reaping
by Talaith900
Summary: A young mage is imprisoned in a Chantry cell. To keep the demons at bay, she dreams of freedom and the life she left behind. *My entry into the Dragon Age Asunder writing contest.*


I haven't seen the sun for so long. I tried to keep track, at first, but there are no windows, no candles, just the four walls of my cell. There is a torch somewhere in the hallway outside my door, I can see it flickering through the cracks. This is my only light. It goes out often, and they don't bother with replacing it until one of them decides it's time for another pointless interrogation. After I lost sense of the passage of days, I tried to count meals. But they are too inconsistent, and if one is delivered while I am asleep often the rats will drag the moldy bread and cheese away before I can fight them off. I have been here for so long, sometimes I think it will never end.

And when I think that, the demons come.

They creep in through the edges of my despair, they swirl into my thoughts and into my dreams like a choking fog. They offer power, freedom, revenge. I turn them all down. I have my own power. I shall win my own freedom. I will take my own revenge.

It is harder and harder to turn them down, but I do. I sing the little songs my sister used to sing. Songs about love and springtime. Songs about sowing and reaping. Songs about life. I think of her singing, and I hope that she is still out there, somewhere, singing in the fields. I think she got away. I hope she got away. I hope I bought her enough time to get away. I hope she's not in the cell next to mine. I don't...I don't remember. I remember fire. And darkness. And I smile into the darkness, and the darkness smiles back.

The templars came with the new moon. The cowards, they hid in the dark, as though that would save them. I know the dark now, it holds me close. It seeps into my bones. It fills my mouth when I scream. It holds me close in the corners of this cell. I know the dark, as those Maker-besotted fools will never know it. They worship the pure fires of Andraste; what do they know of darkness? I will show them. I will show them the dark.

And then I will show them fire.

I have to focus. My thoughts turn this way too easily; there's nothing else to do but soak in thoughts of vengeance, and that only invites the demons. I'll never get out of here that way. I must think of justice already attained. There are no cracks in these memories, no faults or weak points. Only sweet clarity and righteousness.

I must think about my parents.

My father taught me to read and write, to always think before I act. My mother taught me how to survive in the woods, how to read the game trails, find the berries that won't kill you, and build small fires with almost no smoke. They never spoke of their life before my sister and I were born, but I always thought that Mother must have been a bandit, or at least a thief. She was always knew where the escape routes were, she always got us out before the villagers grew too suspicious. Justine and I would spend hours creating sweeping romantic tales of how they met; Mother kidnaps Father for ransom, then he turns her heart and instead they steal away together in the night, fleeing both her bandit crew and his vengeful family. Or, a simple thief scrapes together enough coin for the village scholar to write her letters home to her worried family. He takes pity on her and instead of turning her in for the reward he aids her in finding a better way to live. Justine's favorite version is the noble thief who steals a rich man's purse. He tracks her down, and she opens his eyes to the abuses of the nobles and the Chantry, and together they break in to the Chantry vault and spread the coins throughout the downtrodden of the land. Obviously the most fanciful of all; if they had ever had access to that much coin, they certainly would have kept enough to give themselves and their children a decent home. We never starved, thanks to Mother's foraging and Father's haggling, but we were never really full, either. But we were happy. I thought we were happy.

Justine was born first, five years before me. They were so scared of having another mage child, they even paid for the Reverend Mother from a nearby village to bless their pregnancy every month until I was born. I have no idea what they told her to keep suspicion off of Justine, but Father was always very good with words. But after I burned down a neighbor's barn when I was five years old, my parents turned their backs on the Chantry and moved us far, far away.

Justine could always hide her talent well. Her first magical flare-up was a simple ice spell; she was four, and very badly wanted a glass of cold water in the middle of a hot summer. She froze the whole water bucket, but it melted quickly enough and no one outside the family was around to see. After that, my parents implemented a very simple rule: No Magic Outside The House. This made sure she never let anyone else see what she was doing, and kept her working only small spells for fear of burning the house down around her ears. It worked very well—for her. I was never satisfied. I took to sneaking out in the middle of the night and hiding in clearings deep in the woods, practicing calling and dismissing fire, shaking the earth, and summoning lightning bolts. Not coincidentally, I also got very good at building mage shields. And sometimes, in the woods, the demons would come. They would praise my spellcasting, and whisper promises of vast power and fortune in my ears. I ignored them. My own powers are so beautiful, so strong. Why would I want to hand them over to anyone else?

It took years for my parents to find out what I was doing. By then Justine was almost grown. Anyone else her age would have been spending all her free time down in the village, flirting with the boys and braiding ribbons in her hair. But not Justine. My sweet, loyal sister spent all her free time teaching me everything she had learned; small spells of healing, how to light a fire in a fireplace and make it look like you were using flint and tinder, how to make ice in a bucket without freezing the bucket too. She also knew a few spells of mental confusion, which explained some of Mother and Father's odder behavior and how I had managed to sneak around so much. She had been covering for me, and I never knew. I wondered at the time why she was so insistent that I master everything she knew as fast as I could, but now I understand. She knew that our peace wouldn't last, that sooner or later the templars would come and she wouldn't be able to protect me anymore. I tried to teach her what I knew, but she didn't have the strength for it. She was frightened of the lightning and the fire, which would only push her spells out of control. But she was very good at shielding—after she started coming to the woods with me, there were no more squirrels missing tails or rabbits with scorch marks where an ear used to be. Sweet Justine.

Two weeks before the templars came, my father caught me sneaking out. Damn that bright moon. Damn my carelessness. If he had caught Justine, she could have lied, said she was meeting a boy in the village. My parents would almost have been relieved to hear that; I knew they were growing scared of how much Justine was teaching me. They were scared of our power. But I am just a child in their eyes, even if I have never truly been a child, and no lie I told would convince them. Finally, Justine woke up, and told them the truth.

"It's time, sis. Time to stop hiding who we are. Who you are."

She told them about the fires, and the squirrels and the rabbits. About the earthquakes that had been plaguing the village that were not earthquakes. She told them about her disorienting spells. And she told them how much she hated The Rule. How it had stifled her, curbed her growth and her power, but she wouldn't let them do the same to me. How proud she was of how strong and fearless I had become. How proud they should be, to have a daughter like me.

They weren't proud. They weren't even angry. They were terrified. I could see it in the way they shrank back from my touch, the way they barely greeted me in the morning. I went to the woods in the bright noon of the next day, and they said nothing. I came back with rabbits already cooked, and they said nothing. Justine made ice-cold lemonade for our dinner, and they said nothing.

The next day, they went to the village, and came back quieter than ever. And we knew. They had betrayed us. Mother always knew where the escape routes were, and they found theirs with the templars. Father was always very good with words, and kept himself and Mother from being arrested on the spot. They were not a noble thief and a romantic noble. They were not a marauding bandit and a bold younger son. They were small, and scared, and weak. They didn't hide us from the templars because they loved us. They hid us to keep us cowed. To keep us small, like them. And we were not small, or scared, or weak. We are strong. We stand tall in the world and shape it to our liking. We rage with the storms and howl with the blizzard winds and burn the very air if it offends us! We rule perception and reality and fear nothing from any man, woman, or child on the face of Thedas!

We...we...No. Not we. Just me. Just me, now.

Now I remember. I see what the darkness has been hiding.

The templars killed my sister. They killed my Justine, on the night of the new moon. She was...changing. Her body seemed to be growing in size. When did she learn a spell like that? Why didn't she teach it to me? She was yelling for me to run. I summoned fire in my hands, to fight them back, to buy her time to get to me. But the templar's sword got to her first.

And I roared my pain into the dark night sky, and I turned my fire on my parents, cowering behind a line of templars. And the darkness took my pain, and their screams, and her blood. It took it all, and reached down and wrapped its arms around me and pulled me away.

And I woke up here, in these four walls, with demons battering at my thoughts.

But I will not let them in. I do not need them. I have myself. I am enough.

Even now, I know the resolve is weakening in these Chantry fools. I hear them as they walk the corridors, discussing my fate. "She's just a child," they say, "yet she has held her ground against the demons in conditions that have broken older and stronger mages. Yes, her sister gave in to the demons, but she resists. She only wants to go home to her family. She doesn't remember that night, the trauma has wiped her memories and her magical knowledge. The Circle can train her. The Circle can make her useful to this world. She can be saved."

And I smile into the darkness, and the darkness smiles back. And I wait, and sing a song of sowing and reaping. Soon they will let me go. I will blink my eyes and walk into their light, and I will play the wounded rabbit. I will let them heal me, shield me, save me.

And then I will show them fire.


End file.
